Trayvon Martin Jurors Comin' for a Hangin'

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/pro-trayvon-martin-man-george-zimmerman-jury-article-1.1370906

"A member of a pro-Travyon Martin group was unmasked Wednesday as he tried to get on the Florida jury in George Zimmerman’s trial for shooting the unarmed teen.

A white male potential juror identified on his Facebook page as Jerry Counelis gave long, rambling answers about his impartiality when asked basic questions by attorneys.

Counelis, known as panelist E-7, said he was an unemployed painter and musician and had no problem being sequestered if chosen to serve on the jury.

Circuit Judge Debra Nelson said she had a question for Juror E-7

She then asked if Counelis posted something to the Coffee Party Progressives Facebook page on March 21.

Nelson circled something on a piece of paper and handed it to him, and told him to look at it and tell the court if he posted it.

Counelis said 'yes,' and was dismissed from the room. It’s not clear if he’s been taken off the list of potential jurors.

There were several other incendiary remarks about Zimmerman and police in Sanford, Fla., where Martin was shot.

According to its Facebook page, the Coffee Party Progressives is a group “dedicated to seeking justice for Trayvon Martin.”

On March 21, Counelis wrote on its page that the justice system “needs an enema.”

"In Sanford ... & I CAN tell you THIS. 'Justice' IS Coming!" he wrote, adding that "with the noise WE made ... it couldn't be covered up."...............""You'll get a fair trial followed by a first class hanging."

--Judge Roy Bean

In this case, however, George Zimmerman has much less to fear from a possibly prejudiced and arbitrarily-minded judge. What he does have to fear is the tide of radical liberal reaction.

To say that his lawyers have their work cut out for them would be a gross understatement. The impaneling of this jury will be the deciding factor in this trial, but even the court system will cower in fear of the likely reactions of the mob in the event of a not guilty verdict. This effect has already been seen in reports concerning what evidence the jury will be allowed to hear, such as Martin's text messages.

Our society has come to look upon troublemakers as victims, and all who make an effort to resist wrongful behavior as  right-wingers, rogue vigilantes, or racists.  

Hateful and white-blaming* people like Jerry Counelis, unemployed, presumably without children, and thus having no problem being on a jury for an entire month, are doing all that they can to get themselves on this trial so that they can convict Mr. Zimmerman. People with jobs who may also concerned about crime simply cannot afford to take month off from work (In the US, employers are not required to pay their employees on jury duty and many people are self employed) or leave their kids behind to be sequestered in a hotel for that amount of time. 

*The media was quick to let all of us know that George Zimmerman was a "white Hispanic", and thus fully eligible for anti-white hatred and bias. White hatred by liberal whites has also become almost endemic in the US.(**See below)

This setting is ripe for all of the stay-at-homes to avenge Trayvon Martin, regardless of the latter's actions at the time of the shooting.

Families too have come to have no shame in putting up a wall to prevent any facts from affecting their perceptions. In my county in New Jersey a few years ago, a police officer shot and killed an adult male who had repeatedly taken steps that clearly put the cop in imminent fear of his life. The video in the link below shows what the actor did at the moment that the police initiated the arrest to the point when the second (Backup) officer was able to catch up with his vehicle - all with the initial contact officer having been  inside of it.

http://videos.nj.com/star-ledger/2008/10/police_video_of_fatal_denville.html

When the family members were given a chance to review this video in a private setting, they decided to ignore what they witnessed and left proclaiming that they still thought that their son had been wrongfully killed. In the same manner, the Martin parents decided to pretend to believe that the cries for help on the recording were those of their son and not of George Zimmerman.

With the shooting here in New Jersey,  the media here took the very same position that it did with the Trayvon Martin shooting. The deceased was painted by all as the greatest guy in the world, one who would not harm a fly. The only differences were that the sensationalized coverage was not all over the national media and no media organization tampered with the evidence to make the cop look guilty. The tampering, of course, was done to George Zimmerman on at least  two occasions. Bearing false witness is a very evil thing to do.

There is a frightening movement in our society  that seeks both to enable people to act as threateningly as they wish and to, through fear of prosecution (Along with death threats, etc.) , to force others into inaction. 

The police, prosecutors/district attorneys and judges are poised to let Mr. Zimmerman be made a scapegoat to appease the mob and prevent more of the anti-white violence that immediately  followed the shooting. I submit that we cannot let the fear of delusion-driven reaction affect the outcome of any decision, particularly legal ones.

We also need to put aside any ignorant "what about" claims that refer to injustices towards minorities in the courts from the past. We made the necessary repairs long ago. We also need to emphatically state that we will not entertain the notion that whites still need to be punished for crimes that they did not commit.

**http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/04/anti-white-hatred-is-almost-mainstream.html

These are just a few quotes from the same link. Note that several of them are white - volunteer Sonderkommandos in action.

Jeff Hitchcock (co-founder of the Center for the Study of White American Culture) — “There is plenty to blame whiteness for. There is no crime that whiteness has not committed against people of color. There is no crime that we have not committed even against ourselves … We must blame whiteness for the continuing patterns today that deny the rights of those outside of whiteness and which damage and pervert the humanity of those of us within it.” [Chris Weinkopf, “Whiteness Studies,” Frontpagemag.com, June 25, 2003.] (added 6/29/03)

Gregory Jay (English professor at the University of Wisconsin, on the purpose of Whiteness Studies) — “to make visible the history and practices of white supremacy as found in social life, the law, literature, music, politics, and every other realm of our ‘civilization.’” [Chris Weinkopf, “Whiteness Studies,” Frontpagemag.com, June 25, 2003.] (added 6/29/03)

Stan Crock (correspondent in BusinessWeek’s Washington bureau) — “minorities — not whites — should be the beneficiaries of both the 14th Amendment and the notion of “strict scrutiny” of racially tinged laws.” [Stan Crock, The Real Affirmative Action Problem, BusinessWeek, May 30, 2003.] (added 6/29/03)

Donna Lamb (member of ‘Caucasians United for Reparations and Emancipation’) — “Knowing what I know about what my people did, I wouldn’t be able to respect myself if I weren’t doing everything I can to have … white people face up to this crime we committed and to right this great wrong.” [Manny Fernandez, Thousands To Rally for Reparations Apology Also Sought For Slave Descendants, Washington Post, August 16, 2002] (added 4/10/03)

David Roediger (social historian at the University of Minnesota) — “Whiteness is the empty and therefore terrifying attempt to build an identity on what one isn’t, and on whom one can hold back.” [The Social Contract, A Europhobia Sampler, Summer 1998, p. 290.] (added 4/10/03)

Noel Ignatiev (white Harvard professor and editor of “Race Traitor” magazine) — “Keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females, too, until the social construct known as the white race is destroyed. Not deconstructed, but destroyed.” [Robert Boatman, “Trent Lott’s of the Left,” Frontpagemag.com (online), January 3, 2003.] (added 2/05/03)

Robin Morgan (white author) — “My white skin disgusts me. My passport disgusts me. They are the marks of an insufferable privilege bought at the price of others’ agony. If I could peel myself inside out I would be glad. If I could become part of the oppressed I would be free.” [Robert Boatman, “Trent Lott’s of the Left,” Frontpagemag.com (online), January 3, 2003.] (added 2/05/03)

Elizabeth Smith (Texaco vice president for investor relations) — “White males are only hired by default,” [Jon E. Dougherty, “White Males Need Not Apply at Texaco,” WorldNetDaily.com, March 31, 1999.] (added 2/05/03)

Harris Sussman (white “diversity consultant,” in a front-page article in Managing Diversity, a publication subscribed to by U.S. government agencies) — “When we say ‘white people,’ we mean the people of greed who valued things over people, who value money over people. We know exactly what their values are and where they lead. We have all paid a terrible price for those values …” [White People, Washington Times, Feb. 13, 1997, p. A10.] (added 2/05/03)

Maggie Gallagher (white columnist) — “I hate the idea of being white. I never think of myself as belonging to the ‘white race.’ Those who do, in my experience, are invariably second-raters, seeking solace for their own failures. I can think of few things more degrading than being proud to be white.” [Maggie Gallagher, “The Rhetoric of Race,” NY Post, Oct. 20, 1995, p. 25.] (added 2/05/03)

Richard Parry-Jones (white vice president of Ford Motor Company) — “we are trapped in a monocultural environment that is dominated by old white males. We need to change.” [AP, Ford Ties Executives Perks Pay to Merit, Dec. 24, 1999.]

Susan Sontag (white intellectual) “The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean Algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, and Ballanchine ballets don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.' "

I don't allow attacks such as these to go unchallenged. Whites are by no means alone in regards to things that were either clearly wrong or less than right. Societies created by whites also happen to be some of the most free, tolerant, prosperous, and safe (without tyrannical control) places on earth. They also tend to be the most fertile places for artistic, scientific, literary, recreational, and political pursuits.

The Left needs to deconstruct the West. This must be kept in mind when one reads or hears such vicious drivel.

Last-Ditch Defense of Our Electorate

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/12/ann-coulter-vs-sean-hannity-on-immigration-youre-like-a-liberal-making-a-silly-argument/

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/13/revolt-among-republicans-on-immigration-bill-70-house-members-risk-careers-in-planned-showdown-with-leadership/


From the second link:

"Seventy House Republicans are planning a politically risky showdown with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to try to force additional debate on an immigration bill they say will mean amnesty for illegal immigrants and have dire consequences for the country.

The 70 members are petitioning for a special Republican conference meeting on the bill, a “highly unusual” move to go head-to-head with the speaker, according to Reps. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), Steve King (Iowa) and Louie Gohmert (Texas), who are serving as spokespersons for the group.

Bachmann, King and Gohmert told TheBlaze the group is invoking the Hastert Rule: requiring support from a majority of the majority to bring a bill forward.

The petition is expected to go to the House leadership on Friday, but it’s possible some signatories might remove their names due to political risk, or that Boehner could head off the challenge by striking a deal. Going against leadership in such a way could have harsh political consequences for the signatories, including retaliation such as permanently getting passed over for chairmanship positions......."

There are a few brave and honorable legislators left that will risk their careers to protect their nation.

For the life of me, I will never understand how intelligent conservatives (And there are a lot that have bought this line) have allowed themselves to be convinced that taking 11 million (Very possibly more) people who entered the nation illegally and handing them a "path to citizenship" will not doom our electorate.

I have heard the line parroted as if they had been subjected to months of re-education. "We have to secure our borders first.", "These people just want a better life.", "We can't send all of these people back.'

The respective answers:

-Not first, but along with deportation

- Yes, they want a better life, but if we use that argument, we will allow so many that many regions of  the US will be little to no different than they places that they left.

-Who says that we can't send them back?

The Democratic Party, which has more than largely been hijacked by the Left, is doing quite well in national elections. We have already brought over far more people from cultures vastly different that our own than the system can bear and still remain somewhat recognizable. Our kids are being turned into quasi or full-blown Progressives/Socialists by the primary and college school systems. We still have old die-hards from long established Italian-American and other older immigrant groups, many of who are second to fourth generation, that obstinately refuse to admit that the Democratic Party is immeasurably different than it once was. 

-and our answer to this is to create over ten million more Democratic voters.

This is coming from those that are considered mavericks in the Republican Party. 

I will  bet my bottom dollar that, even if the current immigration bill  (Or if a new one is crafted), is defended, voted on almost solely by Republicans, and is ultimately signed into Law, that Party will garner far less than 10% of the votes of the new citizens. As Hispanics have not fallen for the lie that we should have less kids, or put off having kids until we can give them everything, the ten million-plus will soon soar to a much higher total.

We are told that we just need to get Hispanics to understand that our values are closer to theirs than those of the Left. If only we can get that point across, we still get them to move away from Democratic candidates.

People vote for what is best for them in the short term, just makes them feel good, or puts off serious problems - be they economic or moral, for later generations, . We no longer look even ten years into the future. The pathetic myth of the "Catholic vote" should be sufficient in and of itself to illustrate that point. Many Catholics are barely fighting the destruction of the morals of their own kids.

From the first link:

Ann Coulter answers San Hannity - himself a very wishy-washy guy when it comes to this topic. 

“To the contrary, you are like a liberal making a silly argument! It’s a straw man argument! Nobody cares! This idea that it’s an emergency, it’s a crisis, it’s preposterous,” she shot back.

Coulter went on to say that the immigration bill would be a “disaster for the Republican party” and the entire country “will become California.”
“…We will never win another national election, thank you Marco Rubio,” she concluded."

She is quite right. There is no hurry. These individuals have been here for a while, yet we keep hearing that if something is not done right away, things will go awry or worse. Marco Rubio, in backing off even the terribly lame stance that we must first secure our borders, has lost all credibility. Assuming that he is a loyal American, the only explanation for his actions is that he wants the Presidency and figures that making new Hispanic voters will work in his favor. 

Again, the few that do vote for him will not even be enough to make an appreciable difference.

Ann Coulter, Michelle Bachmann, and a precious few others (Note that our women are acting far more manly than the guys), may well turn out to be the last defenders of our Republic. They will be our Catos, defiantly standing in Utica and refusing to surrender to the forces that will be dismantling that for which so many sacrifices have been made. 

Turning a half-score illegal aliens into citizens will be the death knell of the US as we know it.

MSNBC - George Wallace Was a Republican

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/12/exclusive-msnbc-host-apologizes-for-mistake-with-noted-segregationists-party-affiliation/


You can safely avoid believing the apologies that were made for the following; they knew what they were doing from the beginning. This was no mistake.

That's right, the man who exemplifies segregation like no other has had his Party affiliation changed - and almost 15 years after his death at that.

I am reminded of the Evangelical claim that "St. Patrick was a Baptist".

I know that the Democrats love to have dead people vote, but I never heard of them actually doing a post-mortem change of  parties for them.

Again make no mistake, Leftists live for lying about  history. When they do the telling, Any historical event in Western History that deserves admiration either did not happen or, if it did, was only the action of people with purely selfish motives.  

When the bad guy comes from the political party that has been fully co-opted by the Left, things are still relatively easy. As Big Brother controls the past, one can simply change what the guy was.

The Democratic Party is  the party of slavery, Northern anti-war sentiment in the Civil War, Jim Crow, Segregation, staunch opposition to Civil Rights, and the Great Society. The latter transformed large swaths of a body of Americans who were creating a solid middle class and utterly ruined them, subjecting them to generation after generation of dependence on the government for their basic needs.

The history of the Democrats and Black Americans does not sit well with the story that the Left fabricates, so we have Hollerin' Howard Dean telling Blacks at the Democratic Convention that the only people of their group at the Republican Convention were the hired help. We also have Jawjackin' Joe Biden, the most vulgar public official of whom I am aware, telling Blacks that the Republicans, (From the Party of Abolition, Lincoln, and Civil Rights) would "..put y'all back in chains".

MSNBC apologized for the "R" label for Wallace, but they did not do this by accident. We are a visual-learning culture. We have grown up with TV and visual learning aids. Virtual all of us have developed some degree of a photographic memory of images. What the people saw, be they truly or willfully ignorant, (Or just lying to themselves), will be burned into their  memory. The staff at MSNBC knows that, no matter how many times friends. coworkers, and family members note that the network apologized and clarified that Wallace was a Democrat, those that are more comfortable wallowing in ignorance will stick with what they saw. They will hold fast to this photo no mater how much evidence you pile on their desks.

George Wallace, prior to being the subject the most recent 'Two Minute Hate",was made to be something that he was not. The people cannot know the history of this nation, particularly when it comes to Democrats, so it must be changed. While the image of Emmanuel Goldstein's face was changed into that of a sheep, Wallace restrained his physical appearance but not his true identity.

The staff of MSNBC got what they wanted. They are at war with the truth, and we had better start fighting back.

Scotland Moves to Oversee Upbringing of all Children

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/members-of-the-scottish-parliament-reject-girfec-surveillance-and-named-person-for-every-child-in-scotland#supporters

One reader just sent me a petition on this subject. I signed it right away.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/11/nanny-state-scottish-legislation-would-pair-every-child-with-state-named-person-who-ensures-well-being/

"A bill currently going through the Scottish Parliament seeks to appoint a “named person” to each child in the country. This person, outside of the child’s parents, would “promote, support or safeguard the wellbeing of the child or young person.”

The Children and Young People Bill, which would be part of the already widely adopted Getting It Right For Every Child approach, has been met with backlash by some who have called its provisions “dystopian.”

Here are some of the functions a named person would provide, according to the bill:

(a) doing such of the following where the named person considers it to be appropriate in order to promote, support or safeguard the wellbeing of the child or young person—
(i) advising, informing or supporting the child or young person, or a parent of the child or young person,
(ii) helping the child or young person, or a parent of the child or young person, to access a service or support, or
(iii) discussing, or raising, a matter about the child or young person with a service provider or relevant authority, and
(b) such other functions as are specified by this Act or any other enactment as being functions of a named person in relation to a child or young person..........."When will the people decide that enough is enough?

In Scotland, parents may soon be reduced to being nothing more than wage-earning babysitters for their own kids.

As I noted in a previous post, I read Orwell's 1984 three years before the title year. The picture was a frightening but not unrealistic one, but the handwriting was on the wall for the USSR.

- and it would never happen here in the West, or so we thought.

Western Marxists went right back to work. If they could no longer pretend that the Soviet Union was a functioning state with a viable system, they would stick with the Plan B that had been in operation since the intervening  of WWI and WWII. Cultural Marxism, the baby of Western Marxists, had as its goal the complete undermining of Western Culture (Lukaks - "Who will save us from Western Culture?") to prepare the way for worldwide Socialism. American Academia could even suggest that only the ongoing existence of the classist and Capitalistic Western societies prevented the USSR from succeeding.

Yes, if Major League Baseball had instituted a maximum fastball speed of 85 MPH, then maybe even I could have played on the Yankees.

Western Marxism, though so far avoiding any talk of gulags,  is softer in nature, but is is also filthier, uglier, and far more immoral. One of its key strategies is to drive a wedge between parents and children. The UK is  already notorious for the manner in which Family Services staff are sicced on parents. Letting your kids know that you hold the position that England should consist of mostly ethnic English, for example, is enough to bring a Family Services visit and possible legal trouble at the hands of the State.

If this bill becomes Law, then massive amounts of already-precious tax Pounds (One bold and intelligent move was to avoid the Euro) will be needed to hire the needed hordes of Leftist-minded bureaucrats that will revel in interrogating kids. What they will want to know is whether or not Mom and Dad stray from government-approved methods of raising children, household rules, or punishment, and if they voice any concerns about the direction in which their country is headed.

Winston Smith, being childless, mostly had to worry about the cameras and microphones that were everywhere, including in his TV. Tom Parsons was reported by his young daughter. In Scotland, there may be no need for either; if they do not display sufficient initiative, the Bureaucrats will just take the kids aside and coax them to open up.

What do your parents do if you do not do your homework or talk back to them?

Do they let you go anywhere you want and stay out late or are they too restrictive?

Do they ever spank you?

Do they support the Multicultural policy of Cultural Enrichment or are they racist?

Do they ever claim that Muslim immigrants commit too many crimes?

Do they speak well of or have any literature from groups such as the Scottish or English Defense Leagues?

-You get the picture.

The people of the West are watching the grains of sand run through the hourglass. There will come a time when they will no longer have the means to effect a necessary political movement to free themselves from Western Marxism. For some time, the UK and her daughter-nations were alone in fighting the Nazis in the Westerns theaters. After the war, the UK was then promptly moved in to the Socialist camp. It is telling that the great British Polemarch, Winston Churchill, was sacked once his work was done - his vociferous opposition to and realistic assessment of Socialism made him a danger to have around.

It is even more tragic that George Orwell, who saw and described with such clarity what happens in a Centralized Marxist state, was himself taken with the sick dream of Socialism. Like other Western Marxists, he (Possibly the only one who did so sincerely) seemed to believe that the Western nations could create independent Socialist  states that would not only be worker's paradises but would also avoid all armed conflict. He avoided full-blown Communism, but appears to have deluded himself that the Leftist system of Fascism was the same as Capitalism and that he would be more free to write want he wanted in a Socialist country. If he were alive today and could see how Conservative/opposition journalists and others are treated by the establishments in the West, I think that he would see things quite differently.

Scotland needs a new William Wallace.

1984 Darkness Descends on Military

http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=51308

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/06/u-s-army-says-dont-ask-dont-read-sean-hannity.php

The refrain of  "Orwellian" is now standard fare.

"LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Master Sgt. Nathan Sommers, a 25 year Army veteran who has also described himself as a conservative Christian, faces military discipline for reading conservative books, posting anti-Obama bumper stickers on his car, and hosting a party where Chick-fil-A was served.

Sgt. Sommers believes he is being singled out because of his conservative Christian beliefs. Sommers is a member of the Army band.

In an interview with Fox News Sommers said, "it seems like with the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell - that the Christians have been the ones who've had to go underground and in the closet - for fear of retaliation and reprisals. Christians feel like they can't be forthright with their faith. They have to hide."

Retired Navy Cmdr. John Bennett Wells is representing Sommers and has said the U.S. military is discriminating against Christians and his client. "There's no question about it," he told Fox News. "Because he is religious, because he feels that homosexual conduct is wrong for religious reasons, he is basically being persecuted."

The Army has refused to comment on the case, but told Fox that Sommers' actions bordered on disrespect to President Obama. According to an Army spokesman, the "slightest inference of disrespect towards superiors can have a demoralizing effect on the unit.

The bumper stickers on Sommers car read "Political dissent is NOT racism," "NOBAMA," and "NOPE2012."........."

The environment in out military continues to become more and more hostile to those who do not keep traditional Christian and Conservative values a secret. 

The way that is works today is that, if you are gay, anti-US, anti-White, or adhere to any of the other currently protected positions, you are allowed to say whatever you want and display whatever related symbol that you desire. If, however, you affirm the truth publicly, you will be silenced.

Gay service members do not get punished (As far as I was aware) for marching in inform in Gay pride parades, but MSGT Sommers is not allowed to read books of his choice while in uniform.

I saw bits and pieces of this coming as far back as  the mid 80's. Certain individuals could get away with making the most outrageous and hate-filled racist statements towards other Marines, and the most that would happen (If anything happened at all as a result) was that the entire platoon would get a talking-to. The one that actually made the statement was never addressed separately. Ronald Reagan could be referred to as a "God damned actor", but woe to the Marine that noted that Jesse Jackson (Then seeking the Democratic nomination), did not have any real political experience. The fact that, after his acting career, Reagan (Who was finishing his second term at the time of the outburst) had been a two-term governor of California, apparently did not have any bearing on the assessment of the Reverends' supporters.

Master Sergeant Sommers has been found guilty of Thought Crime. The protections given to some allow them not only to say anything that they want, but also to affect to be offended by any literature, action, or speech that does not meet the criteria established by radical liberals.

This version of totalitarianism is designed to silence people by fear. The public demonstration of beliefs that run contrary to what is allowed by those who define what is righteous will warrant punishment, so you had better be quiet. Even thinking about such things is enough to make one at fault.

We are reminded of the USSR and wartime Japan. In the former, dissent earned you a commitment at a psychiatric facility and long periods of forced dosages of drugs. In the latter, the act of being opposed to the war was illegal.

Today, the very act of (Without doing so in hiding) reading a book by Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, having a bumper sticker that is less than complementary about Obama, or supporting the institution of marriage will leave you without protection, told by your superiors that you are creating a hostile work environment, and open to charges. Since none of the acts of MSGT Sommers are illegal in and of themselves and not in direct violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, what charges are filed will likely be the products of fishing expeditions. The rest of the quoted article notes that the Army considers the bumper stickers to be in violation of the requirement that all members of the chain of command (the President being Commander-in-Chief) be respected. This presents a dangerous precedent; military members are effectively being told that their obligation to obey orders means that they must keep their traps shut, even if they are concerned this particular Commander is running the place into the ground.

I heard someone (I did not get his name) speaking on Sean Hannity's  radio show today. This individual stated that he had been in contact with MSGT. Sommer's attorney and that the latter noted that the MSGT is facing an Article 15 proceeding, which is a non-judicial punishment procedure handled by a Company or Battalion commander. I hope that MSGT Sommers strongly considers refusing the Article 15 and demand a Court Marshall (Which is his right under the UCMJ). Instead of a commander just saying that MSGT Sommers was wrong and fining him, make the Army present its case in a real trial of a military court of law.

MSGT Sommers has made in to this point, so my take is-

In for a penny, in for a pound.

If you have enough evidence against me, then take me to court.

Being unable to get any support for his proposed Civilian National Security Force, Obama has taken to transforming the culture of the entire military of the US in order to prepare them to either participate in - or stand idly by while they occur, any future repressive moves against the people.

NSA Whistleblower Identifies Himself

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/09/nsa-leaker-comes-forward-i-know-i-have-done-nothing-wrong/

Very little time to post, so I will only comment briefly on this development.

"The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.


Snowden will go down in history as one of America’s most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world’s most secretive organisations – the NSA........


• Edward Snowden, 29, tells The Guardian he leaked secret information about the National Security Agency because “I can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”

• “My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.”

• “The only thing I fear is the harmful effects on my family…”

• “I don’t want to live in a world where there’s no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.”

• “The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight.”..........."

Edward Snowden joins a list of citizens who have done what to many has become unthinkable - risking - if not his Life*, but certainly his Fortune, in order to protect both the rights of his countrymen and his own Sacred Honor.

*(That of course cannot be ruled out - He is in Hong Kong now but can be sent to prison if returned to the US)

I has "has become unthinkable" as our society has come to regard one's own career and personal (Mostly financial) security far ahead of those of his fellow citizens. It is a tragic reality that we put our own interests before doing what is right. The pathetic "I have a family"excuse is all-to-often employed to justify any actions, or more likely lack of action, that one takes.

I am retired law enforcement officer. In my years there I found that agency to be a microcosm of today's American society. Contracts would be negotiated by supervising officers that benefited them while leaving officers below the rank of Sergeant to fight an uphill battle to gain fair treatment. Those who had been already promoted would, for the promise of an easy approval of an extra half of a percent for each year of their contract, agree to create a system of annual pay steps for new Sergeants. Not only did this create an unfair situation for newly-promoted Sergeants, it also installed and artificial ceiling for officers. If anew Sergeant only made X amount of dollars that a top-salary officer, then any possible raises for officers would be severely limited. Around the same time, top salary officers, at that time comprising the bulk of the rank and file officers, were also offered a deal if only that too would agree to adding several more pay steps for any new hires. They mad it to top pay in five years, new officers would need nine and a half for the same thing. Also to be dropped for new hires were bonuses for college degrees and other changes that would affect only new hires.

I argued, (For that particular contract - I lost in the next contract) vociferously and successfully to get the officers to drop that idea. I could not bear to see new officers be placed in an unfair position. One of the Sergeants that had shamelessly noted that he had voted for the new supervisor's contract because "They offered us the money", now took to trying to shame me into selling out as did he. He made repeated references that, if we lost in our negotiations, I would not be making enough money for my family. I countered by noting that my kids had a nice home, were fed and clothed well, got an annual vacation at the North Carolina coast, and that no personal benefit of mine should trump the interests of other officers.

Many years later, when drastic and dangerous cuts (Not ordered by governing authorities), along with operational changes that essentially stopped the units from functioning with any appreciable thoroughness or proficiency, other supervisors ( I was a Sergeant  that time), I found the same sad reality among fellow supervisors. Each and every one of them was more concerned with avoiding drawing the ire of the administration because they so desperately wanted to be promoted to Lieutenant  (Police ranks work differently from those of the military). I tried in vain to convince them that all of the rank, status and money on the world in not worth sacrificing their honor. Their officers knew that their bosses only cared for themselves, and it showed in how they dealt with their immediate supervisors.

Mr. Snowden is an anomaly today. He not only recognized that he had to put the rights of his fellow citizens above his own, he actually put his convictions into action.

Lawsuits, Fines, Jail for One's Principles

Related posts:

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/04/washington-state-sues-florist-for-gay.html

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/02/baker-refuses-cake-for-fake-wedding.html

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/05/submit-to-gay-weddings-or-lose-your.html-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today's post:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/07/will-christian-baker-who-refused-to-make-wedding-cake-for-a-gay-couple-go-to-jail/

The Orwellian shadow continues to grow-

In the linked article above, the wrong question is posed. It should have been something like this:

Can laws prohibiting discrimination be expanded to force businesses to provide services specially for events that run contrary to a person's beliefs?

"..........“No,” argues one gay couple who have filed a discrimination complaint against a Colorado baker who refused to provide them with a wedding cake.

Masterpiece Cakeshop, owned by Jack Phillips and based near Denver, Colorado, is at the center of the dispute after David Mullins and Charlie Craig attempted to order the baked good from the business last summer.

Phillips, declining to provide service after learning of the couple’s sexuality, cited his Christian beliefs. But Mullins and Craig aren’t accepting Biblical arguments as a viable basis for the refusal............

Last week, the Colorado Attorney General’s office also filed a formal complaint. If the baker loses and continues to refuse service to gays and lesbians, he could be fined $500 per instance — and given up to a year in jail, his attorney claims. Phillips will stand in front of the state’s Civil Rights Commission in September........"

The war is in full swing, except that few people will admit that this is the case. It is a war on truth, dignity, , religion principles, liberty, and one's own identity. If you have to abandon your principles in order to earn your daily bread, you are no longer free. Not only are Civil laws being used to sue people into submission but criminal laws are also being employed to hammer those who will not acquiesce to the New Order.

As I noted in an earlier post, a Jewish baker cannot refuse service to a neo-Nazi, nor can a black baker do the same for a known member of the Ku Klux Klan, but they can certainly refuse to make cakes for Hitler's birthday or the anniversary of the founding of the KKK. The same argument applies to ceremonies (In this case falsely given legislative recognition) as gay weddings. No one can refuse to hire, rent to, or provide a service to someone simply because of his sexual practices, but the Law cannot be taken to mean that a business owner must provide services for events that celebrate activities are held in observance of such practices.

They way the game is being played now betrays the news rules that have been introduced;

Civil Unions, presented as something sufficient to satisfy those who wanted legal rights commensurate with those of spouses (And fought for by gays), are now presented by the same people as insulting to gays. Not only most you accept that the title of marriage be applied to these unions, but you will also have to make cakes, floral arrangements, take photos, provide planning services, etc. Politely attempting to redirect someone to a business owner who specializes in these events will get you sued, fined and possibly jailed, and as the third of the three top links demonstrates, subjected to a massive boycott by citizens animated by an aberrant picture of righteousness.

The latter is our new Chivalry. Those who fight for the legal allowance to kill the unborn, keep parents ignorant of their own child's plight, force employers to pay for abortifacients, and raise a fist in defiance of God and our culture by joining in on the war on marriage are the noble defenders of society.

I prefer the actual code:

Protect the weak, defenseless, helpless, and fight for the general welfare of all.

-From a previous post:

One must keep in mind that governments do not have creative powers. They cannot bring rights into existence. The State is given the power to regulate and protect institutions such as marriage to prevent abuses. These would include underage brides, one spouse who is still legally married to another, etc.

Marriage existed long before any government; therefore a government cannot,despite any legislative hoop-jumping, create the legality of a marriage that, by its very nature, cannot exist. Any law that presents itself as such is nothing more than play-acting by the State.

I once believed that the primary reason for using statutory powers to pretend that same-sex marriages exist was to destroy the family While I still believe that this is the primary purpose for some, I have come to think that others have a more insidious purpose for this.

-The purpose is to establish full governmental control of society and all of its people.

Think about it. If the State can force people to act as if a government can bring the impossible into existence, and force everyone to go along with it, then what is it incapable of doing or forcing? If a society accepts that the State can conjure up institutions by going through the motions of making laws, what can stop them from removing rights or creating others that infringe on the Liberties of the rest of the people?

At what point will enough be enough for you?

Obama and Columbia U. - There or Not?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122108881386721289.html

http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/obama%E2%80%99s-college-classmate-the-obama-scandal-is-at-columbia/

http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/ghost-of-columbia-part-ii-legendary-columbia-professor-never-heard-of-obama/

The Manchurian candidate label is too fitting to ignore.

Obama never released his college records. The Media, anxious to get their pick in the White House, engaged in what was probably  the first of dozens of free passes for the anointed one and never uttered a peep in protest. They would never have let a non-Leftist get away with a tiny fraction of what they graciously  allowed Obama.

Like other parts of his life, we don't know anything about his grades, his attendance, or even if he was there at all. All that is available to prove that he in fact was at Columbia seems to be in the following known-Liberal-run Snopes link:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/columbia.asp


The first link at top has a different story:

".......Others speculate about ties to the Black Students Organization, though students active then don't seem to remember him. And on the far reaches of the Web can be found conspiracies about former Carter national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who became the candidate's "guru and controller" while at Columbia in the early 1980s. Mr. Brzezinski laughs, and tells us he doesn't "remember meeting him."

What can be said with some certainty is that Mr. Obama lived off campus while at Columbia in 1981-83 and made few friends. Fox News contacted some 400 of his classmates and found no one who remembered him......."

-and the second link:

"....If anyone should have questions about Obama’s record at Columbia University, it’s me. We both graduated (according to Obama) Columbia University, Class of ’83. We were both (according to Obama) Pre-Law and Political Science majors. And I thought I knew most everyone at Columbia. I certainly thought I’d heard of all of my fellow Political Science majors. But not Obama (or as he was known then- Barry Soetoro). I never met him. Never saw him. Never even heard of him. And none of the classmates that I knew at Columbia have ever met him, saw him, or heard of him......"

-and the third link:

(Here  it gets really good)

".....But until now, I was the only one publicly voicing my suspicions. That just changed in a big way. Meet Professor Henry Graff, perhaps the most legendary and honored professor ever at Columbia University. He was THE American History and Diplomatic History professor at Columbia for 46 years. And he is more emphatic than yours truly that there are no Obama footprints at Columbia.

I was put on Professor Graff’s trail by another Columbia classmate, skeptical about Obama’s story. He told me that Professor Graff had been the speaker for the Class of ’53 last weekend at Columbia. My friend was watching Graff answer questions from the crowd when he was asked about Obama at Columbia. Graff said, “I have my doubts he ever went here.”

Graff said, “I taught at Columbia for 46 years. I taught every significant American politician that ever studied at Columbia. I know them all. I’m proud of them all. Between American History and Diplomatic History, one way or another, they all had to come through my classes. Not Obama. I never had a student with that name in any of my classes. I never met him, never saw him, never heard of him.”

Even more importantly, Professor Graff knew the other history and political science professors. “None of the other Columbia professors knew him either” said Graff.

Graff concluded our interview by saying, “I’m very upset by the whole story. I am angry when I hear Obama called ‘the first President of the United States from Columbia University.’ I don’t consider him a Columbia student. I have no idea what he did on the Columbia campus. No one knows him.”.......


So what we have are a (Very) few good friends from the old days who will assure us that Obama did indeed attend Columbia. They may be lying, or it may be that Obama just got into that school as a foreign student and never spoke to a single soul while there. If that is the case, then it may be his grades that the high IQ-having (So we were told) Obama is trying to hide.Or is it the content of his papers? Could they contain calls for bringing Socialism to the US?*

*http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/meeting_young_obama.html

"....Drawing on the history of Western Europe, I responded it was unrealistic to think the working class would ever overthrow the capitalist system. As I recall, Obama reacted negatively to my critique, saying: "That's crazy!"

Since Boss and Obama had injected theory into our debate, I reacted by going historical. As best I can recreate the argument, I responded by critiquing their perspective with the fresh insight I had gained from my recent reading of Barrington Moore's book, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966). Moore had argued that a Russian or Chinese style revolution -- leading to communism -- was only possible in an agrarian society with a weak or non-existent middle-class or bourgeoisie......"

Either way, the Media will - unless more spying scandals keep coming in, continue to let Obama off on his days at his alleged Alma mater. 

I think that the answer, whether or not we ever get it, lies with the culture at Columbia University. That once-honorable institution had become the refuge of the proponents of Cultural Marxism. The refugees came from the Frankfurt School in Germany. This institution was and still is a haven for those who work to bring the Western nations slowly but surely into the Socialist camp. Early Cultural Marxists such as Georg Lukaks and Antonio Gramsci, after experiencing bitter appointment that the workers of Western Europe did not rise up during or after WWI, correctly determined that what prevented the people from revolting en masse was their attachment to their culture. Family, Church, national, ethnic, and historical ties, along with morality, had to be done away with if the people of the West could ever see what was best for them. A "long march through the institutions" was needed to affect such a change in Western societies; thus was born Cultural Marxism; a movement to prepare the way for the advent of worldwide Marxism. When the Nazis came to power, many of the Frankfurt School fled to the US - into the waiting arms of Columbia University.

From there the disease spread throughout colleges in the US. We are the recipients of the fruit of the Frankfurt School.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School

http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-frankfurt-school-in-exile

http://www.marxists.org/subject/frankfurt-school/ 

Columbia has long been a nest of Marxism. Obama may have been taken care of from the beginning.

New York Times - No Credibility For Obama Administration

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/06/ny-times-turns-on-obama-administration-has-lost-all-credibility/

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/opinion/president-obamas-dragnet.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

Note that the New York Times piece was published before we even got wind of the monitoring of  Internet usage information of US citizens.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/06/bombshell-report-govt-also-tapping-servers-of-top-internet-companies-to-collect-americans-emails-photos-messages/

-From The New York Times.

"Within hours of the disclosure that federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.

Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability.

The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers........"

To be honest, I don't know what to make of this.

The New York Times has been the vanguard of the incremental advance of Leftist thought for many decades. For many years, however, it had a junior partner that made the Times look, in the eyes of the trusting public, to be somewhat moderate. Due to its incredibly blatant slant to the Left, New York Post, prior to its purchase by Rupert Murdoch in the mid-70's, was known by the the rank-and-file citizen of the New York Metropolitan area as "a communist paper".

The Times was more subtle but no less effective in getting their point across, especially to those who fancied themselves to be "smarter than the average guy". The motto of ''All the new that's fit to print" was unquestioned by many of the readers.

The immeasurable horrors of the Khmer Rouge, for example, received (If my memory serves me correctly) three tiny mentions in its back pages during its entire reign of terror.

The Times also has taken whatever position suits them for the moment. Pope Pius the XII was praised by the paper during the darkest days of WWII for being  "a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe". In the 90's, with the Nazis long and safely gone from the scene, the same paper did a volte-face and accused him of doing nothing to help Jews. The apparent motive was to blunt the mountains of evidence of the Pope's tremendous and successful efforts to hide and spirit away literally tens of thousands of Jews (Sources Below) and redirect the uninformed readers towards false witness Left-wing works such as Hitler's Pope and Under His Very Windows. The reason that I give a motive is that both of the latter books were published in the same period that many factual ones hit the shelves. The Times couldn't have people buying books that gave any credit to a Pope, especially if he was thwarting the efforts of Nazis.

http://www.amazon.com/Yours-Precious-Witness-Memoirs-Catholics/dp/0809140322

http://www.amazon.com/Did-Pope-Pius-Help-Jews/dp/080914476X

http://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Hitlers-Pope-Against/dp/0895260344/ref=pd_sim_b_1

http://www.catholic.com/documents/how-pius-xii-protected-jews

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, as I noted, I can't be sure why the Obama administration has been called out by one of its strongest supporters. In fairness, perhaps they too have had enough of an administration that goes so unimaginably far in defying the Law and our rights. But, I do wonder if the staff of the Times sees that the curtain has finally been pulled away by Toto, ripped down by the Cowardly Lion, carted off by Dorothy and the Scarecrow, and chopped to pieces by the Tin Man. If this is the case, then I suspect that the Times realizes that the jig is up and that, if they want to continue being able to euphemistically present themselves as being merely "Left of Center" (A common strategy of Leftists of our era*), they had better cut and run from this administration.

Get out while the gettin' is good.

*http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2012/10/black-actress-attacked-for-supporting.html

Power-hungry individuals never know when to stop.The Obama crew, having enjoyed the active and passive support of the Media has up until this point been able to dodge one bullet after another. A reasonable person would realize that at some point his luck would run out, but this gang seems to have truly believed that they could get away with anything and everything.

Fast and Furious, Benghazi, seizures of journalists records, the IRS scandal, repeated refusals to enforce acts of the US Code - the Law, endangering our troops in Afghanistan by hamstringing them with callously made rules of engagement; with so many to mention, listing all that come to mind is like reading a warning list on the safety decal on a ladder - so many warnings that none of them actually get read.

I do wonder if our legislators can drum up the nerve to impeach Obama.  Even that presents a problem. This entire administration needs to go away - Biden included. 

The most frightening part of all, though, is that half of our nation is fine with this guy.

At what point will enough be enough for you?

Western Decline - Will The Third Rome Take the Torch? Part 2

What I wrote last night would no doubt be considered way too much by some, way too little by others, and way too generalized by the remaining third.

My point in starting with a brief background was to illustrate that the Slavic peoples, particularly those in the East, have long been held back from reaching their full potential as leading powers. Russia and the Ukraine's plight have already been noted. Western and Southern Slavs had to contend with foreign interference and domination from German and Ottoman powers and decades of Marxist rule, so they too were prevented from taking their place as innovators and leaders.

The main advantage of the Slavic countries in our era is that they still mostly enjoy a relatively homogeneous cultural base. Unlike the Western nations, their leaders did not go about bringing in near the amounts of immigrants from the Muslim or Latin American world. Consequently, their electorates, while certainly not always of the same mind, still have a sense of a common identity; a crucial factor in creating a vigorous and stable Republic or Democracy. In religion too the Slavic nations have greater homogeneity than the West; Catholic regions are still mostly so, and are those that are Orthodox have the benefit of a over a thousand years of  their Christian beliefs and traditions.

There has also been some good news with population growth:
http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-demography-health-birthrate-deaths/24998304.html

Although he is raked over the coals for requiring that groups from other nations working in Russia register as foreign agents, Putin must feel that he has no other option. Hordes of all sorts of Evangelical and Fundamentalist organizations have descended on the Slavic peoples and relentlessly engaged in "sheep stealing" - the concentration of seeking converts not from the irreligious, but largely from practicing Orthodox Christians. As I noted in the recent post on the Evangelical factor in the decline of cultures, those who embrace this quite modern style of Christianity - disingenuously presented as one from the First and Second Century AD, quickly lose their taste for all aspects of their culture that do not meet with the approval of one's local pastor. When we are looking at a people who have such a rich heritage and tradition, a lot, tragically,  winds up being kicked to the curb as the Evangelical mindset becomes established. Few things make my heart sink faster and lower than to hear a friend tell me that his Ukrainian wife's family is, for example, Pentecostal.

As the West moves steadily towards its softer but much filthier and morally bankrupt style of Socialism, the people in Slavic countries can say  that they have "been there, done that". Even with the massive injections of foreign aid (Thanks to the banking establishment), the Marxists could never create a system that could compete with a system that mandates competition. When you have no real ownership over your work, you tend to just go through the motions until quitting time arrives. I am convinced that, when Western leftists assure us that "It just hasn't been done right yet", what they mean is that Socialism will work once the economic systems of the West have been removed from the board. If you take away the most effective players, anyone can win a spot on the team. I believe that the the threat of a restored Leftist system in any of the former Warsaw Pact nations is remote.

Russia is rich in natural resources. She has a culturally homogeneous people that has a great history but they have yet to truly make their mark. Much of the old industrial base from the USSR has no need to be updated, so it can be scrapped. This gives all of the Slavic nations a great advantage as they can start anew and in time challenge even China and other industrialized nations. Unlike the US, Russia has dropped the pointless and expensive military endeavors that were a big part of the Cold War.  As I noted in previous posts, Russia even has the opportunity to reach out to provide security and some order to the Christians of the Near and Middle East.

A country long hidden under the rule of  nomadic dynasties and Marxism, Russia has the ability to become what Germany is to the EU, only without the intentionally self-destructive mass immigration and Leftist propaganda in the schools. The Slavic world has a lot of open space. In the event that she does become open to immigration, Russia and the other Slavic nations have room for those who would rather leave the sinking ship that is the West. Russia has been a place in which cultures merge. I cannot rule out the possibility that, maybe a century from now, enough Westerners who are determined to live freely will seek to make a new home for their descendants - one that is likely to grow and avoid Leftist stagnation for many generations.

Many ancient and Classical works made their way to the West in the last decades of the Byzantine Empire. These contributed greatly to the revival of learning in the West. Those who saw the end coming could not bear to have these priceless treasures destroyed by the Ottomans. Like the farsighted Byzantines, many Westerners will - if they cannot save their own nations or culture, gather what they can so that the literature , arts, music, political theory, ingenuity and work ethic, have a place in which they can be preserved.

-and I hope, continue to be taught.

Western Decline - Will The Third Rome Take the Torch? - Part 1

When I treat the topic of the decline of Western Culture and Civilization*, I hope to avoid being labeled as a fatalist. I have noted in many previous posts that Western people are not finished and that they still have a window in which they can return to that which made them great. That window is closing quickly though, and I want to present some possible outcomes in the event that our downward spiral is not soon arrested.

If the West reaches a point in which it  is no longer recognizable, I think that Russia may be the state that takes its place. China and India of course will be quite powerful and that is fine, but my thoughts are on a place in which at least some of the elements of Western Culture can be married to a related Culture.

[Added 6/5/13- I realized that I failed to note that the above supposes not only that the decline in the West is not stopped, but also that no move was made by Western peoples to leave most of the lost nations, coalesce in a nation that has a higher chance of being saved, and establish a reformed and restored Western Culture.]
http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/06/if-west-falls-what-then.html


Note that in the following historical notes I am generalizing very much.

The Slavic peoples were late in coming on the world stage. Like the ancient Gauls and other Celts, they did not have a sense of unity as a people or ethnic/cultural group. The Eastward movements of the Ostrogoths under Ermanaric, followed by the Westward movements of the Huns, Avars, and Magyars, were the first events that had the effect of subjugating many of the tribes and keeping them from coalescing and growing in strength. The post-classical  slave trade concentrated so much on them that the word for a slave - a cognate of Slav, made it way into several languages. Other invaders would follow; early Bulgars (A remnant Hunnic dynasty later to become fully Slav), Turkic tribes such as the Patiznaks, Khazars, and Cumans, and the longest-lived dynasties from the East - the Mongols.The Ukraine born much of the brunt of the Turkic invasions - their land was too attractive to horse and pastoral peoples who needed grazing lands and it was situated in a major avenue of approach for such peoples.

In the Medieval period, the Empire of Great Moravia was killed in its infancy by the Magyars, whose aggressions were diverted by the German king, anxious to both eliminate a rival and to prevet the  terrorizing pf his dominions. This move proved to be foolish as the invaders soon moved on to Central Europe and as far and France and Italy.

Russia first came into being as an organized state under the rule of the Varangians,  name for the Northmen (Mostly Swedes)that moved Eastward from their domains. My understanding is that the word Russia comes from the Finnish word Rus, which meant a rower, an attestation to their use of longships both on sea and in the great rivers such as the Volga. Like other European states, Russia underwent periods of unity and disunity in which principalities become independent. While Slavs that border Western Empire adopted, Catholicism, the Russians and other Slavs embraced Orthodox Christianity. This was to have a powerful effect on the development of the Slavic nations; they identified spiritually, culturally and politically with the Byzantine Empire. When Constantinople (The second Rome)later fell to the Ottomans, many in Russia were to see the Principality of Muscovy (It became the strongest Russian state) as being the heir of the Roman tradition and authority.

The Mongol invasions were to have the greatest effect of the Russian and other Slavic regions. Their cruelty was of a particularly savage nature and was applied in a wholesale manner to the peoples that resisted their domination. The Mongols lived off the tribute of the conquered peoples and vassal states of khanates. They ruled much of Russia and kept other principalities as tributary states from the early 13th century and were not finally ejected under Ivan The Terrible (meaning powerful or awesome).

With the many centuries of a frontier-state status, the people were never able to engage in acts of progress such as that which occurred in Western Europe. The nobility were set in their ways and the culture was a bit of a  mix of Slavic, Byzantine, European, and Mongol. Peter the Great (Sometimes viciously) attempted a 17th-18th century version of a Great Leap Forward, but as a middle class as strong as that of Western Europe had not yet developed in Russia, the economy did not have the ability to take off and grow on its own - it had been too centralized and directed right from the top.

This pattern did not change much until the collapse of the governments and the rule of the Bolsheviks. What decentralization and middle class growth had occurred was lost in the stagnation of a Marxist state. Seizures of lands, terrifying purges, forced collectivizations, attacks on the culture and religion, and purposely-created famines (The Ukraine again bears the brunt),  and the creation of a full-blown totalitarian police-state were to send this region into a backwards state that would last until the late 80's - early 90's. The horrific invasion by Hitler's Germany not only killed many more millions, it caused immeasurable damage to the industrially and agricultural infrastructure, thus undoing even what projects the Communists had attempted. It also made Russia yet again a frontier state with all that follows such a condition - only this time the threat came from Western Europe.

I will do Part 2 tomorrow-






* I prefer to differentiate between "Culture" and "Civilization" in the manner of German writers. To explain this approach as shortly (And probably as poorly) as possible, a society reaches the point of civilization when a culture has effectively given its all. The people in general have lost their virtue, desire to grow, intellectual and marshal vigor, and creative (Particularly in art and music) capacity. The shell of the Culture is maintained as a sort of a facade, and the people congregate in urban areas, where they start to become enervated - concentrating more on personal advancement and conspicuous consumption rather than living in and improving the Culture that was bequeathed to them.

Religion of Peace Clarification Toolkit

Work and an and-of year HS Baseball banquet took all of my day, so I will take the opportunity to provide the reader with a nice starter kit. When you run into someone who tells you that Islam is a" religion of Peace", or that we have been "forced to think that Islam is aggressive or violent" (Actually, the opposite is true - we have had the Peace claim forced on us), the information and arguments contained in the links and excerpts below will  have given you a good base from which to begin the necessary corrections of the claims that your hear:

http://gatesofvienna.net/2011/11/islam-is-fear-part-i/

http://gatesofvienna.net/2011/11/islam-is-fear-part-ii/

http://gatesofvienna.net/2011/11/islam-is-fear-part-iii/

http://islamsfatalflaw.blogspot.com/

-and today's submission by the same writer:

http://gatesofvienna.net/2013/06/is-this-a-religion/


".........Yes, Islam does have some religious components. But the majority of Islam is a perverted totalitarian/political ideology that dictates almost all aspects of Muslim life.

Islam as a whole discriminates against, women, homosexuals, blacks, non-Arabs, non-Muslims and especially Jews. Islam has a “legal system” called Sharia. Sharia is a barbaric code that today, in the 21st century, dictates stoning of women for the “crime” of being raped. It also mandates amputation of hands and feet for thievery, and execution for anyone who tries to criticize, change or leave Islam. To make matters worse, significant portions of Islam’s theological texts incite its followers to commit horrendous acts of violence while enforcing religious law (Sharia) and “spreading the faith”.

Muhammad — Islam’s founder — is revered by Muslims (like a cult leader) as the perfect human. Muslims are supposed to make every effort to live lives similar to Muhammad’s. But Muhammad — according to Muslim sources — was a pedophile, a rapist, and a murdering thug.

Don’t be misled by PC talk of “cultural sensitivity”, “coexist” signs, and “interfaith dialog”. Below is a short list (this list can easily be expanded) of global violence driven by Islam. Ask yourself: Is Islam really like Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism and other religions? If you think so, prove it — send me an equivalent list:


In Thailand, Muslim terrorists were responsible for over 4,000 deaths in the past ten years.
In the Philippines, Muslim terrorists have been committing murders and violence for more than a generation..........."

There is much more in the linked article.

Western Decline - The Evangelical Factor

I freely admit that yesterday's post pushed the upper limit of broad generalization, but my intention was to look far ahead into the future. Barring a real awakening of Western thought and a restoration of its values, the people of the West are likely to cling to the pitiful fragments of their national identities,or of Western Culture in general, until the end. This too has occurred time and again in history. Like the Romans and Greeks that went through the motions of their timeworn ways as the entire system devolved into something barely recognizable, the French nobility and Church kept a firm grip on the statuses of their familial titles and lands even as the economy of their nation clearly needed reform. Big changes were on the horizon but they were ignored. A lesser noble could easily be more mired in poverty than his peasant neighbor, but a status derived from the days when a cheap system of administration (Feudalism) was the rule, was too much to give up. Many of the nobles who had it really easy thought that they and their descendants would always be able to fritter way their lives in frivolity (With occasional military service) at Versailles. The consequence was a revolution that slaughtered more peasants than well-off people and has ultimately given France no less than five constitutions in less than the time that the US has had one.

Father's and Mother's Day, along with Easter and Christmas, are on the way out of school observances in the US. Filling in the void left by the gradual but steady abandonment of Catholicism and Mainline Fundamentalism, the rise of Evangelical and Fundamentalist ("Evangelical" will be used here to mean both) Christianity brings an outlook that strikes at the core of Western Culture almost as thoroughly as do Leftism, Atheism, and Islam. While the former certainly does not engage in suppressing Christianity itself, it does in fact create a  quite different picture of Christian thought, one that changes core Christian beliefs and has no room whatsoever for any cultural practice or tradition that is not directly related to Christianity. The annual campaign against Halloween is one example that illustrates how Evangelicals will use their growing  influence to bar yet another tradition from schools. This occurs even oustside the schools. A few years ago, one church group successfully petitioned a town council in New Jersey to prohibit trick-or-treating on October 31st since it fell on a Sunday that year. Bowing to the pressure, the town council decreed in Newspeak that trick-or -treating would be allowed on Monday November 1st.

-For the record, there in fact an number of Evangelical who are more than reasonable in how they treat other Christians and civil society as  whole. This is intended to look at the general Evangelical mindset in how it applies to Western Culture..

Although most Christians have no idea of this fact, Evangelical Christians speak a quite different language from that of the Orthodox, Mainline Protestants, and Catholics. When an Evangelical speak of being a Christian or born again, what he means has a world of difference from what is imagined. The doctrinal separation of  Baptism from the act of becoming a Christian (Derived from a 16th century concoction,  this makes Baptism only a mere post-belief formality to Evangelicals), tears the outlook of the believer from two millennia of Christian belief and tradition. Imbued with  fiercely proud attitude that he made his decision to become a Christian on his own, he is also strangely locked into a world in which his local pastor functions with more of a practical infallibility than the Pope (The Pope only very rarely exercises infallibility). This "my pastor says" stance is not to be challenged by anyone; that is of course, until he and only he decides that his pastor is wrong and starts going to another Evangelical church.  This attitude, coupled with the position that to be a believer one must hold that his belief is permanent and guarantees heaven (If you hold that God allows you to depart from a state of belief, then to an Evangelical you were never a Christian in the first place), makes for a bully-like personality - one that gives the believer license to dictate terms to just about everyone with whom he is in contact. Neighbors, coworkers, supervisors, school and civic traditions - none are out of his jurisdiction.

Evangelicals have no use for anything that predates Christianity. Childrens stories of mythical creatures are anathema, and pre-Christian heroes and historical figures, or even Christians from history that did not expressly promote the Evangelical manner of Christian teaching, are treated as if they did not exist. The only exception to this is the peculiar 1984-like affinity among certain Evangelicals for relabeling Classical-era Christians as their own. St. Augustine of Hippo, St, Patrick, and St. Athanasius of Alexandria are three of their favorite choices for makovers - their actual writings notwithstanding. Like the Inner Party newspaper editors of 1984, too many  Evangelicals also display a willingness to recast all sorts of Christians, Christian groups, or pseudo-Christian sects from centuries past as old versions of them - the histories of Saint Patrick, the Donatists, Albigensians, Bogomils, and others are treated as if they can be changed like the color of paint in your kitchen.

With a Puritanical disdain for anything that "is not in the Bible" (What is said the Bible is also only what they allow it to mean), joined with a bizarre type of false witnessing for people and events of history, Evangelicals and Fundamentalists tend to constitute a group that plays little or no part in preserving Western Culture. Indeed, their outlook makes many of them quite averse to secular contributions. Western art (A Michelangelo or Greek nude is a scandal to them) , music (They don't dwell much on the great composers), legends and literature (Try talking about Beowulf,  Xenophon, pre-Christian beliefs in Europe, or Alfred the Great versus the Danes with one), political theory (they have no real use for Locke, Tocqueville,  Burke, or Montesquieu), actual history (Atheists paint virtually all of our Founders as semi-Atheistic Deists and Evangelicals make almost all of them devout and practicing Christians), and other facets of Western Culture that do not fit with the Evangelical world view are not worth any effort to discuss, let alone defend. Western Science? - They spend millions trying to prove that Evolution did not happen in any way, shape, or form.

As last note before I try to sleep, we must also take into account widespread Evangelical belief in a pre-millennial- pre-tribulational Rapture, a belief that is barely two hundred years old but in that time has become a core part of Evangelical thought. If the believer is actually a true believer, then he or she will never have to face the events that shake the world when it reaches its end. The Rapture doctrine (The word itself  is not in the Bible) teaches the believer to see himself as so separate from non-believers that he will be taken away body and soul with the low-profile Second Coming (Also a two hundred year old belief - The actual Second Coming will not be simply to rescue believers from the period of suffering). This tends to truly give the Evangelical not only an tremendous attitude of superiority, it also leaves him utterly unconcerned about the deterioration of his society and culture -these are merely the harbingers of the Rapture.

He has no appreciation for Western Culture in the first place, and he will probably be taken up before its collapse anyway, so why should he care?

As Western Socialism and creeps on and more leave Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Mainline Protestantism and flock to the Evangelical manner of Christianity,  there will be fewer and fewer defenders of Western Culture to meet the threat

Revised - If The West Falls, What Then?

The decline of Western culture and civilization, although not a foregone conclusion by any means, is certainly a real possibility.
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Added 6/2/13 -
I have no idea of when or how I did it, but before I hit the "publish", button, I cut an entire paragraph from this post last night . It went something like this:

If couples only have one or two children, populations cannot maintain current levels, let alone grow. Without population growth, societies decline. From an historical standpoint, the end of every great and strong society has been marked by declining birthrates. Rome, Sparta, and the Hellenistic word are just a few examples. Interestingly, the massive and steady decline of birthrates in the Muslim world from roughly the 16th to the early 20th century had a direct correlation with the decline of Islamic political power, just as the massive rise of birthrates in the same world since then has paralleled the resurgence of its political power. Our fellow citizens would rather reap all of the benefits of the safety and prosperity of our society than be saddled with the burden of kids. Consequently, (Unless things change soon) the best features, attractions, or attributes of the West will be the cause of its decline.

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As Alexis de Tocqueville (Whom I refer to as being mind-shatteringly insightful) noted in Democracy in America, a Republic or a Democracy must have a core group of people with a common or reasonably related culture. Without such a safeguard, the structure will not stand.

Whether one's culture is  from (Or has been made by a lifetime of exposure to) a New England-type Puritanism, Midwestern farmers, any one of the old southern or Appalachian subcultures, American blacks, southwestern Anglo or old Mexican-descent  subcultures, Native Americans, or any other region/group of the United States, each person is keenly aware that his identity is tied in with the settlement and history of this nation. Some of it, like the history of any region, is marked by tragic and sometimes atrocious acts and practices, but few will try to argue that the degree of freedom and prosperity of the US was not earned without sacrifice and that it certainly not was simply the result of an idea that could just be taught to newcomers. When Poles, Italians, Irish, and other groups came to the US, they possessed enough of an understanding of a Western Culture (And a common religion that was closer to Protestantism than many will care to admit) to assimilate within one of two generations. Eastern European immigrants, seeing the means by which others took on an American mindset, followed the same pattern.

The demographics are changing in the West - and rapidly so. In Western Europe, Italians, Germans, Spaniards, and others in Western Europe are not having enough children to keep their respective nations "Spanish" or German". As Pat Buchanan noted in The Death of the West, Italy is being fast-tracked by her own people into becoming a macrocosm of what Venice is now - a "theme park" was his phrase for the future of Italy. The vacuum is being filled filled by non-European immigrants - mostly Muslim. Islam greatly changes societies in which it has gained a substantial minority or a plurality. A majority will turn the entire structure upside-down.

In the US, we are tripping over each other to add another 10-11 million illegal aliens (Primarily Latin American) to our voter rolls. It is unfortunate that far too many of our fellow citizens from Latin America are perfectly  fine living their entire lives in the US without making any real effort to learn English or to identify themselves as Americans . With the additional influxes of large numbers of Haitians, West Africans, East Asians, South Asians, and others who do not share a common cultural or religious culture, the US is poised to go in the same direction as that of Western Europe. When fewer and fewer people can recall childhoods in which attending Memorial Day ceremonies and other classic American observances were an integral  part of their lives, the sense of American identity will wither away. Canada and Australia are heading in the same direction.

In South Africa, those of Dutch, German, and British decent live in constant fear of vicious sexual assault and for their very lives.

The Western variant of Socialism, softer on the totalitarian side but all-controlling nonetheless (And much filthier, uglier, and immoral), is advancing steadily towards its fruition.

Are the people of these nations helpless to stop this march of events? Not all, but I fear that they will fail to admit that something must be done until it is too late to stem the tide. Even the thought of a political fight that a preservation of national and cultural identity would require seems to be too much for Westerners, and neither do they want to start having big families again. In solitary protests, many Catos will be spilling their guts in their individual Uticas as societies deteriorate into the darkness of Western Socialism.

I also cannot rule out the possibility that, Western Europeans and some of those of related cultures will opt to leave their countries, reforming and coalescing  in a region or nation chosen to become a place in which Western Culture can be restored and reshaped; not American, French, German etc, but something that includes the best of all of these without any of their weaknesses, such as that which the Left exploited to fully destroy the American electorate by creating generations of dependence on welfare. Schools would have to be made to be eternally free of Leftist thought. Parents would have to be guaranteed their authority except in extreme circumstances. The people must not be enslaved to support those who would not work. Simply reaching a certain age would not make you a voter. Citizens would not have to live in fear of firearms confiscation. Churches and Synagogues would not be forced to pay for abortions or contraception; indeed, the horror of abortion itself must be laid bare for all to see, and people must be reminded the primary purpose of the conjugal act. Marriage would be kept inviolate. Judges would be bound by the Law and the civil Law would be bound by the Natural Law. Atheists would not be free to sue to have cross monuments removed. Crime and moral decay would not be tolerated.

This would be a modern-day Volkerwanderung - a mass movement of peoples determined to find a place in which they can live in the manner of their choice.

That failing to occur, I hold that the future is with Russia. This may very well happen even without a Western collapse, but that is for another post.